'Are you regretting having signed?' asked Friedman, misconstruing her expression. 'No.' The two of them looked at each other for a moment. 'If you have any questions, ask them now.' 'Which artist is going to paint me?' 'I'm not permitted to tell you. Any other questions?' 'No.'
'Then we'll expect to see you here at a quarter past five precisely.'
Eight hours to organise a life are almost too much. Or so Clara thought. Her life was very simple: there was work and leisure. To sort out the first of these, all she had to do was phone Bassan; the latter implied a call to Jorge. To make it even simpler, when she got home she discovered Bassan had left her a message on her answerphone. He did not seem too upset, but it was not his usual affectionate tone. Gertrude had called him to let him know Clara was not going on show that day, and he wanted to know why. 'You know I approve of everything you do, Clarita, but please tell me before you do it.' She could understand he might be a bit put out, but nevertheless was annoyed at his reproach. She called him in Barcelona, but only got his answering machine.
'Alex’ she said into silence, 'it's me, Clara. Something important has come up and I'm not going to be able to continue with Girl in Front of a Looking Glass. I'm sorry. Anyway, there was only a week left at the GS gallery, and I seem to remember you had a substitute ready… Really, I'm sorry if this causes you problems, but there's nothing I can do about it. A big hug.'
Then she thought about the call to Jorge. Once she was sure what she wanted to say, she dialled his mobile number. All she got was his voicemail. It seemed to her that all of a sudden her life had become a dialogue with silence. She decided to leave another message.
'Jorge, this is Clara. I'm going to be away for a few days on a job that's come up.' She paused. 'It looks like a good opportunity.' Another pause. 'A very good one. I'll call you some other time, if possible. Big kiss.'
It was just gone half past ten but her eyes were heavy as lead. She folded down the bunk in her bedroom, undressed and threw herself under the sheets. She needed to catch up on her night's sleep. She set her electronic alarm for two in the afternoon and fell straight asleep. She did not dream of Alberca or her father, but of an outdoor painting she had been for Gutierrez Reguero three years earlier, called The Tree of Science. When she woke up, she had forgotten all about it. She got up, ran to the bathroom and plunged under the jet of water from the shower. Following her instructions, she put no creams on her body afterwards. She stared at her naked body in the mirror and said goodbye to it: she knew this would be the last time she saw it in its normal state. Then she wrapped herself in a bathrobe, went into the living room, put on a jazz CD and let herself be carried away by the dark notes of the tune as she rummaged through her wardrobes.
The problem was that she liked everything she had. Buying clothes and accessories was one of her chief pleasures. Friedman's announcement that everything she wore or took with her would be destroyed had not seemed to present much of a problem, but now as she gazed at her beautiful, expensive wardrobe, she hesitated. There were clothes by Yamamoto, Stern, Cessare, Armani, Balmain, Chanel… it was not so much what all this had cost her as the pleasure she got from the softness of this woven flesh and blood. Every dress, every suit had a different personality for her. They were like new and special friends. She could not do this to them.
What if she wore the tracksuit she went to work in? But as she considered it laid out flat and obedient on the bed, its empty sleeves just waiting for her to fill them, she understood it would be like condemning the faithful old family dog to a sudden death.
Nothing she could sacrifice in the wardrobes then. She stood on a chair and looked in the cupboards on top. Unfortunately, she was in the habit of throwing away old clothes. She did though store some winter items, and the first things she came across were a dark velvet suit and a pink, flesh-coloured roll-neck jersey.
The catlike feel of the velvet brought back a sudden phantom, and reminded her of the first time she had worn it. Vicky.
Vicky was young, scarcely a year older than Clara. She was pretty, slim, with straw-coloured short hair. She took drugs and was a great talent. In a very short time she had become the most important hyperdramatic painter in Spain. Thanks to a grant, she had been able to broaden her studies, first with Rayback in London and then at the Van Tysch Foundation in Amsterdam with Jacob Stein. She had even received the oracle from the lips of the great Maestro himself. She did more than merely admit her lesbianism: she unfurled it like a banner. Her works denounced the way homosexuals were marginalised, or mocked men and women repressed 'by a Roman, Vatican, class-ridden society, a parody of what the Greeks had hoped to create'. The great loves of her life had been two Anglo-Saxon women, two exuberant and beautiful paintings by the name of Shannon Coller and Cynthia Bergmann. Early in 2004 she had chosen Clara for an interior duo with Yoli Ribo that she was thinking of calling Sit Down. The two of them met on a grey, freezing afternoon. Clara decided to wear the velvet suit she had just bought to visit the artist in her Las Rozas villa. Vicky received her in shirtsleeves, smeared with paint, and showed her upstairs to the studio. A slender blonde sketch she had poured several cans of paint over was standing naked on tiptoe in one corner. There were also several illegal ornaments, almost all of them obscene. A male Table designed in London served them tea, pastries and marijuana cigarettes. A Japanese toy, also masculine, his body painted quinacridone red, made her more exciting offers, but Clara was not in the mood to play with him, although Vicky insisted she could have him.
'He's not my style,' Vicky told her, 'but he was given to me as a present. Keep him if you like.'
Before she talked about the proposed work, Vicky carried out one of her famous quick interviews.
'What sign are you?'
'Aries,' Clara said. 'I was born on 16 April.' 'We won't get on then,' the artist said, scratching the air. 'I'm a Leo.'
But they did get on, at the beginning at least. She told Clara the idea she had for Sit Down. Yoli and Clara would be six metres up on a scaffolding, painted in flesh colours and locked in an embrace. The work was a commission for a mansion in Provence already stuffed with art. Vicky thought that by putting her work high up near the ceiling, it would stand out above the rest. The two women would spend a month in the mansion, and there was a possibility that the work could become permanent It would require a great effort and would need a first-rate maintenance team, but it would mean a real fortune for all three of them. She's a great saleswoman, Clara thought. She accepted the offer, and Vicky started to sketch her the next day.
A fortnight after that first meeting, during one of the sketching sessions, something happened. Vicky was drawing her outline, and was gently moving her hand soaked in flesh-coloured paint down the outside of Clara's thigh. When she reached the knee, Clara could feel the pressure of her hand, the protracted silence, the tingling sensation on her painted skin.
'Do you like women, Clara?' Vicky asked all of a sudden, calm as could be. ‘I like some women,' Clara replied, equally calmly.
She was naked, half-painted in a variety of colours as she squatted on her haunches in Vicky's studio. Vicky was wearing her work clothes: an unbuttoned, paint-covered shirt and track-suit bottom. Her hand was still on Clara's knee. 'Have you had any experience with women?' 'Aha,' said Clara. 'And with men.'
There was nothing strange about this for a canvas, and both of them knew it. It was easy for a painting to love another body, whoever it belonged to: the barriers were unclear, the limits became blurred. 'Would you like to sleep with me?' Vicky asked.
Clara liked the soft guttural tone of her voice, and the way Vicky's cheeks fired up much more than her own. 'Yes,' she said.
Vicky looked at her and went on painting. Her hand moved smoothly distributing the flesh colour on Clara's knee. Clara had no idea when it happened. One moment there was art, technique, a painter at work; the next, there was feeling, heavy breathing, a lover's embrace. And the brushstrokes suddenly became caresses.
Later on, when the relationship between the two women was a reality, Vicky reproached her for having responded so matter-of-factly. She used it against Clara whenever she was angry with her. 'You said yes as though you were being asked to go hang-gliding at night. You said yes as though you were being asked to meet a Physics Nobel laureate. OK, let's give it a try, you said. There was no real love or sincerity in your declaration.' 'Maybe there was no real love,' Clara retorted, 'but I was being sincere.'
'You have no feelings,' Vicky declared. 'I try to hide them: I'm a work of art,' replied Clara. And added, 'And you are an artist, so you find it impossible to hide them. You even invent them if you don't have any.'
Sit Down went on permanent exhibition in Provence. It was an exhausting period: they only had a few hours in which to rest, eat and recover before they had to climb up on the scaffolding again. The length of time they had varied, because it depended entirely on the life of the purchaser, on the visitors or the parties he had organised. The maintenance team was excellent, but the two women ended up completely exhausted. Nevertheless, it was a
